Modern designs for office furniture often require specially designed fabrics. Office task chairs are known in which the seating material that supports the weight of the chair occupant is comprised of an elastomeric monofilament in a woven fabric. One popular chair of this type of the Aeron® chair sold by Herman Miller, Inc. of Zeeland, Mich., USA. This brand of office chair employs elastomeric monofilament yarn combined with solution dyed textured polyester in a woven open mesh design.
It has been found that the use of monofilament in furniture seating sometimes provides excess friction upon the clothing of a person sitting in the chair. That is, monofilament-containing fabrics are rugged and durable, but unfortunately they sometimes accelerate the degradation and wear upon clothing that contacts the monofilament-containing fabric. Excessive wear upon the user's clothing is considered undesirable.
A recent design trend with regard to office seating is that consumers are believed to be attracted to chairs that will easily articulate to multiple positions, affording greater mobility while seated. Furthermore, back and lumbar support frame structures are sometimes highly visible in modern office and task chairs. Consumers like to see the support structures, and a chair that provides such structures in a highly visible way is sometimes desirable. Thus, a recent design trend is to provide mechanical support features of the chair in a highly visible manner.
One high performance task chair made by Haworth, Inc. of Holland Mich. is the Zody® office chair. This chair features an occupant support surface that comprises a flat woven fabric that is made using a leno weave construction. One example of leno weave construction is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,435,221 to Waldrop et al.
Circular knitted fabrics are used in automotive upholstery. One property of knitted fabrics is that they tend to stretch significantly as compared to woven fabrics. Most unsupported automotive knits are not capable of making a full “recovery” after displacement. That is, most automotive knits are not capable of returning reliably to their original configuration after undergoing significant and numerous stretching events. This prevents the use of such knits in many applications.
Knit fabrics have proven to be desirable in other applications, such as clothing, in which the fabric is not subject to significant loading stress. But, to make a knitted fabric suitable for automobile seating applications, such a fabric usually must be laminated to a scrim or backing material for support. Then, this composite laminated structure may be adhesively bonded to a foam bun or the like for installation into an automotive seat. Such applications of knitted fabrics use scrims and/or backing materials to keep the knitted fabric from stretching too far and becoming wrinkled or unsightly on the seating surface, after years of use by an occupant. Without such backing support materials, typical knitted automotive fabrics would not function properly for their intended purpose.